Every Alternate Universe Star Trek Character In Lower Decks Season 5, Explained

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This article contains spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks."

The penultimate episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" — season 5's "Fission Quest" — takes place away from the U.S.S. Cerritos on a mysterious, covert interdimensional vessel called the U.S.S. Anaximander. The Anaximander is commanded by Captain William Boimler (Jack Quaid), a transporter duplicate of Brad Boimler, created several years ago on the series. Captain Boimler belongs to the ultra-secret organization Section 31, and he is on a mission to repair fissures in the spacetime continuum. It seems someone has been ripping holes in space, allowing free access between dimensions. This is causing chaos, as alternate versions of familiar "Star Trek" characters are haphazardly cross-pollinating, invading each other's universes with accidental frequency. Boimler and his crew use the tools on the Anaximander to seal up holes and find the hole-ripping culprit.

The multiverse came into play in the first episode of "Lower Decks" season 5, which saw the crew of the Cerritos come face-to-face with parallel universe versions of themselves. Thanks to recent hit films featuring Spider-Man, Deadpool, or Michelle Yeoh (or less successful ones featuring Morbius or The Flash), mainstream audiences are likely familiar with the multiverse concept by now. There are an infinite number of universes and, as such, an infinite number of you. Any alternate version of you exists on another plane. "Fission Quest" at least has several lines of dialogue satirizing how tired multiverse characters can be.

Captain Boimler's crew, to exploit the concept to its fullest, is made up entirely of parallel universe characters, each one familiar to deep-cut Trekkies who have been following the franchise for decades. Let's look at each character and see where they may have been plucked out of "Star Trek" canon.

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The chief medical officer on board the Anaximander is none other than Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson), the slippery Cardassian tailor from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." The Garak viewers knew was a former spy who had retired to be a tailor, but who kept some of his more unsavory connections, making him a complex, interesting character. Garak frequently had lunches with the handsome young doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) on "Deep Space Nine," where he would dole out unsavory advice. Many audiences picked up on a subtle sexual regard that Garak might have had for Bashir, and actor Andrew Robinson has said at "Star Trek" conventions that Garak definitely wanted to sleep with Bashir.

On "Lower Decks," Garak and Bashir are a happily married couple, both of them serving as medical officers on the Anaximander. An additional twist: Dr. Bashir is a sentient hologram, only made to look like the original Bashir. This was something proposed in the "Deep Space Nine" episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" (February 24, 1997). It seems that, in this universe, that proposal was accepted.

The weapons officer on the Anaximander is Curzon Dax, a character who died before the events of "Deep Space Nine" but who is mentioned in the show's dialogue a lot. Curzon is a Trill who shares his consciousness with a small, long-lived worm-like being implanted in his abdomen. The worm outlives its hosts and is implanted in new hosts, accruing memories from many lifetimes. In the pilot episode of "Deep Space Nine," it's explained that Curzon had died of old age and that his symbiont had been implanted in a young woman named Jadzia (Terry Farrel). Jadzia Dax was the science officer on "Deep Space Nine" while Curzon was a hard-drinking, Klingon-loving party boy. "Lower Decks" is the first time we've seen Curzon in his full glory.

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Also on the bridge of the Anaximander is the Vulcan science officer T'Pol (Jolene Blalock). T'Pol served as the first officer and only Vulcan on the Enterprise on "Star Trek: Enterprise." She slowly came to appreciate the relatively crass humans she had to work with and even developed a romantic and sexual regard with the ship's engineer, Trip Tucker (Connor Trinneer). She never married Trip, but they had started to have an affair by the end of "Enterprise."

The events of "Enterprise" take place an entire century before the original "Star Trek." However, Vulcans are very long-lived, so there may've not been any time travel involved in getting T'Pol onboard the Anaximander. Captain Boimler explains that T'Pol had already been married to Trip Tucker for over 60 years by the time she joined up, so she was better about talking to humans than she was in "Enterprise." It's also nice to hear that she and Trip finally got to have that relationship.

The rest of the crew is rounded out entirely by duplicates of Harry Kim (Garrett Wang), the young and stalwart goody-goody from "Star Trek: Voyager." Many Trekkies noted that Harry Kim remained an ensign throughout the seven-year run of "Voyager," which always seemed like a grave injustice. It also, it seems, was fate. All of the Harry Kims on the Anaximander are ensigns. Indeed, when they meet a Harry who holds the rank of lieutenant, all the others panic.

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Captain Boimler eventually meets another captain in "Fission Quest" by the name of Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard). Captain Sloane also commands a ship of traversing dimensions and spends the episode tripping between them. Sloane, some may recognize, was a character in 1996's "Star Trek: First Contact" and aided Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) in his building of the Phoenix, Earth's first faster-than-light vessel. She was also the one who noticed that Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) has let his desire for revenge against the Borg get the best of him and compared him to Captain Ahab to his face.

The Sloane on "Lower Decks" is a pragmatic Starfleet commander and seems to have been born later than the one from "First Contact." She also wears an "Enterprise"-era uniforms, even though "Enterprise" takes place about 90 years after "First Contact."

As for the Anaximander itself, it's a Defiant-class starship just like the U.S.S. Defiant, which was prominently featured on "Deep Space Nine." The Defiant was a mere prototype designed as an attack vessel and built to fight the Borg. It was ultimately never put into production due to it being overpowered, small, and difficult to pilot. However, it seems in the parallel universe of "Fission Quest," the Defiant did eventually leave the prototype stage. One can perhaps assume that the Anaximander is a far more advanced and powerful version of the Defiant.

"Lower Decks" famously contains a lot of "Star Trek" Easter eggs in every episode, but the opening of dimension portals allowed the show's writers to up their game with references. "Fission Quest" contains so many winks, one might mistake it for an eye twitch. It's all very fun.

The final episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" premieres December 19, 2024, on Paramount+.